Portal:Nuremberg trials
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Introduction
The Nuremberg trials (German: Die Nürnberger Prozesse) were a series of military tribunals held by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war after World War II. The trials were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, and their decisions marked a turning point between classical and contemporary international law.
The first and best known of these trials was that of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT). It was described as "the greatest trial in history" by Norman Birkett, one of the British judges who presided over them. Held between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the Tribunal was given the task of trying 24 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich – though the proceeding against Martin Bormann was tried in absentia, while another defendant, Robert Ley, committed suicide within a week of the trial's commencement.
Selected general articles
Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (/ʃpɛər/; German: [ˈʃpeːɐ̯] (
listen); March 19, 1905 – September 1, 1981) was a German architect who was, for most of World War II, Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office. As "the Nazi who said sorry", he accepted moral responsibility at the Nuremberg trials and in his memoirs for complicity in crimes of the Nazi regime, while insisting he had been ignorant of the Holocaust.
Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931, launching himself on a political and governmental career which lasted fourteen years. His architectural skills made him increasingly prominent within the Party and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Hitler instructed him to design and construct structures including the Reich Chancellery and the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nuremberg where Party rallies were held. Speer also made plans to reconstruct Berlin on a grand scale, with huge buildings, wide boulevards, and a reorganized transportation system. In February 1942, Hitler appointed him as Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. Read more...
Jodl as General der Infanterie in 1940.
Alfred Josef Ferdinand Jodl (
listen (help·info); 10 May 1890 – 16 October 1946) was a German general during World War II, who served as the Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht).
After the war, Jodl was indicted on the charges of conspiracy to commit crime against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity at the Allied-organised Nuremberg trials. The principal charges against him related to his signature of the criminal Commando and Commissar Orders. Found guilty on all charges, he was sentenced to death and executed in 1946. Read more...
Francis Beverley Biddle (May 19, 1886 – October 4, 1968) was an American lawyer and judge who was Attorney General of the United States during World War II and who served as the primary American judge during the postwar Nuremberg trials. Read more...
The United States of America vs. Carl Krauch, et al., also known as the IG Farben Trial, was the sixth of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany (Nuremberg) after the end of World War II. IG Farben was the private German chemicals company allied with the Nazis that manufactured the Zyklon B gas used to commit genocide against millions of European Jews in the Holocaust.
The twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT). The IG Farben Trial was the second of three trials of leading industrialists of Nazi Germany for their conduct during the Nazi regime. (The two other industrialist trials were the Flick Trial and the Krupp Trial.) Read more...
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess (Heß in German; 26 April 1894 – 17 August 1987) was a German politician, and a leading member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) of Germany. Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, he served in this position until 1941, when he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom during World War II. He was taken prisoner and eventually convicted of crimes against peace, serving a life sentence until his suicide.
Hess enlisted as an infantryman at the outbreak of World War I. He was wounded several times over the course of the war and was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class, in 1915. Shortly before the war ended, Hess enrolled to train as an aviator, but he saw no action in this role. He left the armed forces in December 1918 with the rank of Leutnant der Reserve. Read more...
Keitel as field marshal in 1942
Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel (22 September 1882 – 16 October 1946) was a German field marshal who served as Chief of the Armed Forces High Command (German: Oberkommando der Wehrmacht or OKW) in Nazi Germany during World War II. According to David Stahel, Keitel was "well known and [...] reviled as Hitler’s dependable mouthpiece and habitual yes-man" among his military colleagues.
Following the war, Keitel was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. He was found guilty, sentenced to death and executed in 1946. He was the third highest-ranking German officer to be tried at Nuremberg. Read more...
Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (7 August 1870 – 16 January 1950) ran the German Friedrich Krupp AG heavy industry conglomerate from 1909 until 1941. He and his son Alfried would lead the company through two world wars, producing almost everything for the German war machine from U-boats, battleships, howitzers, trains, railway guns, machine guns, cars, tanks, and much more. Krupp produced the Tiger I tank, Big Bertha, the Paris Gun, among other inventions under Gustav. Following the war, plans to prosecute Gustav Krupp as a war criminal at the 1945 Nuremberg Trials were dropped because by then he was bedridden and senile. Read more...- William Norman Birkett, 1st Baron Birkett, PC, QC (6 September 1883 – 10 February 1962) was a British barrister, judge, politician and preacher who served as the alternate British judge during the Nuremberg Trials.
Birkett received his education at Barrow-in-Furness Grammar School. He was a Methodist preacher and a draper before attending Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1907, to study theology, history and law. Upon graduating in 1910 he worked as a secretary and was called to the Bar in 1913. Read more...
The Krupp Trial (or officially, The United States of America vs. Alfried Krupp, et al.) was the tenth of twelve trials for war crimes that U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone at Nuremberg, Germany after the end of World War II.
These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT). The Krupp Trial was the third of three trials of German industrialists; the other two were the Flick Trial and the IG Farben Trial. Read more...
The Einsatzgruppen trial (officially, The United States of America vs. Otto Ohlendorf, et al.) was the ninth of the twelve trials for war crimes the US authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before US military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal. They took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve US trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT). Read more...
Neurath as a Reichsprotektor in 1939
Konstantin Hermann Karl Freiherr von Neurath (2 February 1873 – 14 August 1956) was a German diplomat remembered mostly for having served as Foreign minister of Germany between 1932 and 1938. Holding this post in the early years of Adolf Hitler's regime, Neurath was regarded as playing a key role in the foreign policy pursuits of the Nazi dictator in undermining the Treaty of Versailles and territorial expansion in the prelude to World War II, although he was often averse to Hitler's aims tactically if not necessarily ideologically. This aversion eventually induced Hitler to replace Neurath with the more compliant and fervent Nazi Joachim von Ribbentrop.
Neurath served as "Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia" between 1939 and 1943, though his authority was only nominal after September 1941. He was tried as a major war criminal in Nuremberg and sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment for his compliance and actions in the Nazi regime. Read more...
Baldur Benedikt von Schirach (9 May 1907 – 8 August 1974) was a Nazi German politician who is best known for his role as the German Nazi Party's national youth leader and head of the Hitler Youth from 1931 to 1940. He later served as Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter ("Reich Governor") of Vienna. After World War II, he was convicted of crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg trial and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Read more...
Erich Johann Albert Raeder (24 April 1876 – 6 November 1960) was a German admiral who played a major role in the naval history of World War II. Raeder attained the highest possible naval rank—that of Grand Admiral — in 1939, becoming the first person to hold that rank since Henning von Holtzendorff. Raeder led the Kriegsmarine for the first half of the war; he resigned in 1943 and was replaced by Karl Dönitz. At the Nuremberg Trials he was sentenced to life in prison but was released early due to failing health. Read more...
Telford Taylor delivers the prosecution's opening statement.
The Ministries Trial (or, officially, the United States of America vs. Ernst von Weizsäcker, et al.) was the eleventh of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
This case is also known as the Wilhelmstrasse Trial, so-named because both the Reich Chancellery and the German Foreign Office were located at the Wilhelmstrasse street in Berlin, which was often used as a metonym for overall German governmental administration. The defendants in this case were officials of various Reich ministries, facing various charges for their roles in Nazi Germany and thus their participation in or responsibility for the numerous atrocities committed both in Germany and in occupied countries during the war. Read more...
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; German: [ˈɡøːʁɪŋ] (
listen); 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German political and military leader as well as one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party (NSDAP) that ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. A veteran World War I fighter pilot ace, he was a recipient of the Pour le Mérite ("The Blue Max"). He was the last commander of Jagdgeschwader 1 (Jasta 1), the fighter wing once led by Manfred von Richthofen.
An early member of the Nazi Party, Göring was among those wounded in Adolf Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. While receiving treatment for his injuries, he developed an addiction to morphine which persisted until the last year of his life. After Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Göring was named as Minister Without Portfolio in the new government. One of his first acts as a cabinet minister was to oversee the creation of the Gestapo, which he ceded to Heinrich Himmler in 1934. Following the establishment of the Nazi state, Göring amassed power and political capital to become the second most powerful man in Germany. He was appointed commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe (air force), a position he held until the final days of the regime. Upon being named Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan in 1936, Göring was entrusted with the task of mobilizing all sectors of the economy for war, an assignment which brought numerous government agencies under his control and helped him become one of the wealthiest men in the country. After the Fall of France in 1940, he was bestowed the specially created rank of Reichsmarschall, which gave him seniority over all officers in Germany's armed forces. Read more...
Karl Dönitz (sometimes spelled Doenitz German: [ˈdøːnɪts] (
listen); 16 September 1891 – 24 December 1980) was a German admiral who played a major role in the naval history of World War II. Dönitz briefly succeeded Adolf Hitler as the head of state of Nazi Germany.
He began his career in the Imperial German Navy before World War I. In 1918, he was commanding UB-68 when she was sunk by British forces. Dönitz was taken prisoner. While in a prisoner of war camp, he formulated what he later called Rudeltaktik ("pack tactic", commonly called "wolfpack"). At the start of World War II, he was the senior submarine officer in the Kriegsmarine. In January 1943, Dönitz achieved the rank of Großadmiral (grand admiral) and replaced Grand Admiral Erich Raeder as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Read more...
Walter Warlimont in the defendants' dock of the High Command Case at Nuernberg
The High Command Trial (officially, The United States of America vs. Wilhelm von Leeb, et al.), also known initially as Case No. 12 (the 13 Generals' trial), and later as Case No. 72 (the German high command trial: Trial of Wilhelm von Leeb and thirteen others), was the last of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone of Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT). Read more...
Julius Streicher (12 February 1885 – 16 October 1946) was a prominent member of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party, or NSDAP). He was the founder and publisher of the semi-pornographic and virulently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine. His publishing firm also released three anti-Semitic books for children, including the 1938 Der Giftpilz (translated into English as The Toadstool or The Poisonous Mushroom), one of the most widespread pieces of propaganda, which warned about the supposed dangers Jews posed by using the metaphor of an attractive yet deadly mushroom. The publishing firm was financially very successful and made Streicher a multi-millionaire.
After falling out with Hermann Göring in 1939, Streicher was declared unfit for leadership by a Nazi Party Court and stripped of his party posts, although he continued to publish Der Stürmer, which was not an official publication of the Nazi Party. Read more...- Hartley William Shawcross, Baron Shawcross, GBE, PC, QC (4 February 1902 – 10 July 2003), known from 1945 to 1959 as Sir Hartley Shawcross, was a British barrister and politician and the lead British prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal. He also served as Britain's principal delegate to the United Nations immediately after World War II. Read more...
Hans Georg Fritzsche (21 April 1900 – 27 September 1953) was a senior German Nazi official, ending the war as Ministerialdirektor at the Propagandaministerium (Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda). He was present in the Berlin Führerbunker during the last days of Adolf Hitler. After Hitler's death, he went over to the Soviet lines in Berlin to offer the surrender of the city to the Red Army on 1 May 1945. He was taken prisoner. Fritzsche died in 1953. Read more...- The Nuremberg trials (German: Die Nürnberger Prozesse) were a series of military tribunals held by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war after World War II. The trials were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, and their decisions marked a turning point between classical and contemporary international law.
The first and best known of these trials was that of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT). It was described as "the greatest trial in history" by Norman Birkett, one of the British judges who presided over them. Held between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the Tribunal was given the task of trying 24 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich – though the proceeding against Martin Bormann was tried in absentia, while another defendant, Robert Ley, committed suicide within a week of the trial's commencement. Read more...
SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl receives his sentence of death by hanging
The Pohl trial against the Nazi German administration of the "Final Solution" (also known as the WVHA Trial and officially The United States of America vs. Oswald Pohl, et al) was the fourth of the twelve trials for war crimes that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. The twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, although both courts presided in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. They are known collectively as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
In the Pohl case, SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl and 17 other SS officers employed by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (abbreviated in German as SS-WVHA), were tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the time of the Nazi regime. The main charge against them was their active involvement in and administration of the "Final Solution". The WVHA was the Nazi government office that ran the concentration and extermination camps. It also handled the procurement for the Waffen SS and, as of 1942, the administration of the SS-Totenkopfverbände. Read more...
Robert Ley (German: [ˈlaɪ]; 15 February 1890 – 25 October 1945) was a German politician during the Nazi era who headed the German Labour Front from 1933 to 1945. He committed suicide while awaiting trial at Nuremberg for war crimes. Read more...
The Judges' Trial (German: Juristenprozess; or, the Justice Trial, or, officially, The United States of America vs. Josef Altstötter, et al.) was the third of the 12 trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
The defendants in this case were 16 German jurists and lawyers. Nine had been officials of the Reich Ministry of Justice, the others were prosecutors and judges of the Special Courts and People's Courts of Nazi Germany. They were—amongst other charges—held responsible for implementing and furthering the Nazi "racial purity" program through the eugenic and racial laws. Read more...
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (30 April 1893 – 16 October 1946), more commonly known as Joachim von Ribbentrop, was Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany from 1938 until 1945.
Ribbentrop first came to Adolf Hitler's notice as a well-travelled businessman with more knowledge of the outside world than most senior Nazis and as an authority on world affairs. He offered his house for the secret meetings in January 1933 that resulted in Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany. He became a close confidant of Hitler, to the disgust of some party members, who thought him superficial and lacking in talent. He was appointed Ambassador to the Court Of St James's (for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) in 1936 and then Foreign Minister of Germany in February 1938. Read more...
Wilhelm Frick (12 March 1877 – 16 October 1946) was a prominent German politician of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), who served as Reich Minister of the Interior in the Hitler Cabinet from 1933 to 1943 and as the last governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. After World War II, he was tried and convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials and executed by hanging. Read more...
Count François de Menthon (8 January 1900 – 2 June 1984) was a French politician and professor of law. Read more...
Ernst Friedrich Christoph "Fritz" Sauckel (27 October 1894 – 16 October 1946) was a German Nazi politician, Gauleiter of Thuringia and the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment from March 1942 until the end of the Second World War.
Sauckel was among the 24 persons accused in the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and was sentenced to death by hanging. Read more...
Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht (22 January 1877 – 3 June 1970) was a German economist, banker, centre-right politician, and co-founder in 1918 of the German Democratic Party. He served as the Currency Commissioner and President of the Reichsbank under the Weimar Republic. He was a fierce critic of his country's post-World War I reparation obligations.
He was never a member of the National Socialist German Worker's Party, but served in Adolf Hitler's government as President of the National Bank (Reichsbank) 1933–1939 and became Minister of Economics (August 1934 – November 1937). Read more...
The RuSHA trial against the SS racial policies of genocide (officially, United States of America vs. Ulrich Greifelt, et al) was the eighth of the twelve trials held in Nuremberg by the U.S. authorities for Nazi war crimes after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts in their occupation zone in Germany, not before the International Military Tribunal, although they took place in the same rooms, at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
In the RuSHA Trial, the 14 defendants were all officials of various SS organizations responsible for the implementation of the Nazi "pure race" programme: including RuSHA (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt, the "Race and Settlement Main Office"); the office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood (Reichskommissar für die Festigung des deutschen Volkstums, RKFDV; a post held by Heinrich Himmler); the Repatriation Office for Ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, VoMi); and the Lebensborn society. The charges centered on their racial cleansing and resettlement activities. Read more...
Hans Michael Frank (23 May 1900 – 16 October 1946) was a German war criminal and lawyer who worked for the Nazi Party during the 1920s and 1930s, and later became Adolf Hitler's personal lawyer. After the invasion of Poland, Frank became Nazi Germany's chief jurist in the occupied Poland "General Government" territory. During his tenure throughout World War II (1939–45), he instituted a reign of terror against the civilian population and became directly involved in the mass murder of Jews. At the Nuremberg trials, he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and was executed. Read more...
Funk with Golden Party Badge, 1942
Walther Funk (18 August 1890 – 31 May 1960) was a German economist and Nazi official who served as Reich Minister for Economic Affairs from 1938 to 1945 and was tried and convicted as a major war criminal by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Sentenced to life in prison, he remained incarcerated until he was released on health grounds in 1957. He died three years later. Read more...
Wilhelm List is handed the indictment in the Hostages Trial. Standing beside him is Maximilian von Weichs.
The Hostages Trial (or, officially, The United States of America v. Wilhelm List, et al.) was held from
8 July 1947 until 19 February 1948 and was the seventh of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
This case is also known as the "Southeast Case" because the defendants were all German generals leading the troops in south-eastern Europe during the Balkans Campaign, i.e. in Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia, and they were charged as those responsible for the hostage-taking of civilians and wanton shootings of these hostages and of "partisans" that the German troops committed there in the years from 1941 on. Read more...
Russian judges at Nuremberg, left to right: Alexander Volchkov, Iona Nikitchenko. British judge, Norman Birkett sat at extreme right
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Fedorovich Volchkov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Фёдорович Волчко́в; 1902–1978) was a judge during the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. He was the alternate Soviet judge during the proceedings. Before taking up the practice of law he had worked in the film business. Read more...
John Johnston Parker (November 20, 1885 – March 17, 1958) was a U.S. judge who failed confirmation to the Supreme Court by one vote. He was also the U.S. alternate judge at the Nuremberg trials of accused Nazi war criminals and later served on the United Nations' International Law Commission.
John J. Parker was born in Monroe, North Carolina, the son of John Daniel and Frances Johnston Parker and older brother of Samuel I. Parker, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his service in World War I. He received the Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1907 and a law degree in 1908. While at the university, Parker was president of his class in his freshman and senior years, of the student council, of the athletic association, and of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He was also a member of the Dialectic Society and an intercollegiate debater. In addition, he won a number of prizes and medals. Read more...
Friedrich Flick receives his sentence in the Flick Trial.
The United States of America vs. Friedrich Flick, et al. or Flick trial was the fifth of twelve Nazi war crimes trials held by United States authorities in their occupation zone in Germany (Nuremberg) after World War II. It was the first of three trials of leading industrialists of Nazi Germany; the two others were the IG Farben Trial and the Krupp Trial.
These trials were all held before American military tribunals. The Flick trial was one of the 12 Subsequent Nuremberg Trials of the military, political, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, held after the Nuremberg Trials (the "Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal"), the most well-known trials which tried 22 of the most important captured Nazis. Like the other trials, the Flick trial took place at the Palace of Justice. Read more...
Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen, Erbsälzer zu Werl und Neuwerk (German: [fɔn ˈpaːpn̩] (
listen); 29 October 1879 – 2 May 1969) generally known as Franz von Papen, was a German nobleman, General Staff officer and politician. He served as Chancellor of Germany in 1932 and as Vice-Chancellor under Adolf Hitler in 1933–34. He belonged to the group of close advisers to President Paul von Hindenburg in the late Weimar Republic. It was largely Papen, believing that Hitler could be controlled once he was in the government, who persuaded Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in a cabinet not under Nazi Party domination. However, Papen and his allies were quickly marginalized by Hitler and he left the government after the Night of the Long Knives, during which the Nazis killed some of his confidantes. Read more...
The prosecution team in the Milch trial. Front right is Telford Taylor (Chief Counsel). Across the table from him is Clark Denney (Chief Trial Counsel). Immediately to Taylor's right is Henry T. King (Assistant Counsel).
The Milch Trial (or officially, The United States of America vs. Erhard Milch) was the second of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
In the Milch trial, former Field Marshal of the Luftwaffe Erhard Milch was accused of having committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. The indictment was presented on November 14, 1946. The charges against Milch were summarized by Michael A. Musmanno (one of the tribunal judges) as follows:- Erhard Milch is charged with having knowingly committed war crimes as principal and accessory in enterprises involving slave labor and having also willingly and knowingly participated in enterprises involving the use of prisoners of war in war operations contrary to international convention and the laws and customs of war.
- The defendant is accused of having knowingly and willfully participated in enterprises involving fatal medical experiments upon subjects without their consent.
- In the third count the defendant is charged with responsibility for slave labor and fatal medical experiments, in the same manner as indicated in the first two counts, except that here the alleged victims are declared to be German nationals and nationals of other countries.
Martin Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a prominent official in Nazi Germany as head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information and access to Hitler. He succeeded Hitler as Party Minister of the National Socialist German Workers' Party after Hitler's suicide on 30 April 1945.
Bormann joined a paramilitary Freikorps organisation in 1922 while working as manager of a large estate. He served nearly a year in prison as an accomplice to his friend Rudolf Höss (later commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp) in the murder of Walther Kadow. Bormann joined the Nazi Party in 1927 and the Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1937. He initially worked in the party's insurance service, and transferred in July 1933 to the office of Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, where he served as chief of staff. Read more...
Robert Houghwout Jackson (February 13, 1892 – October 9, 1954) was an American attorney and judge who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He had previously served as United States Solicitor General, and United States Attorney General, and is the only person to have held all three of those offices. Jackson was also notable for his work as the Chief United States Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals following World War II.
Jackson was admitted to the bar through a combination of reading law with an established attorney and attending law school. He is the most recent justice without a law degree to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Jackson is well known for his advice that, "Any lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect, in no uncertain terms, to make no statement to the police under any circumstances", and for his aphorism describing the Supreme Court, "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final." Jackson developed a reputation as one of the best writers on the Supreme Court and one of the most committed to enforcing due process as protection from overreaching federal agencies. Read more...
photograph by Heinrich Hoffmann, 1941
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg (Russian: Альфред-Эрнст Вольдемарович Розенберг, tr. Al'fred-Ernst Vol'demarovich Rozenberg; 12 January 1893 – 16 October 1946) was a German theorist and an influential ideologue of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and later held several important posts in the Nazi government.
The author of a seminal work of Nazi ideology, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930), Rosenberg is considered one of the main authors of key National Socialist ideological creeds, including its racial theory, persecution of the Jews, Lebensraum, abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, and opposition to what was considered "degenerate" modern art. He is known for his rejection of and hatred for Christianity, having played an important role in the development of German Nationalist Positive Christianity. At Nuremberg he was sentenced to death and executed by hanging for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Read more...
Robert Falco (26 February 1882 – 14 January 1960) was a French judge at the Nuremberg trials, who later sat in the Cour de Cassation. Read more...
Geoffrey Lawrence, 3rd Baron Trevethin, 1st Baron Oaksey DSO TD PC QC (2 December 1880 – 28 August 1971) was the main British Judge during the Nuremberg trials after World War II, and President of the Judicial group. Read more...
A sentence of death by hanging is pronounced by a US War Crimes Tribunal upon Adolf Hitler's personal doctor, 43-year-old Karl Brandt. Brandt was also Reichskommissar (Reich Commissioner) for Health and Sanitation
The Doctors' trial (officially United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al.) was the First of 12 trials for war crimes of German doctors that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany, after the end of World War II. These trials were held before US military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials", formally the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
Twenty of the 23 defendants were medical doctors (Viktor Brack, Rudolf Brandt, and Wolfram Sievers were Nazi officials), and were accused of having been involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia. Josef Mengele, one of the leading Nazi doctors, had evaded capture. Read more...
Ernst Kaltenbrunner (4 October 1903 – 16 October 1946) was an Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany during World War II. An Obergruppenführer (general) in the Schutzstaffel (SS), between January 1943 and May 1945 he held the offices of Chief of the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA). He was the highest-ranking member of the SS to face trial at the first Nuremberg trials. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and executed by hanging. Read more...
Arthur Seyss-Inquart (German:
Seyß-Inquart (help·info); 22 July 1892 – 16 October 1946) was an Austrian Nazi politician who served as Chancellor of Austria for two days – from 11 to 13 March 1938 – before the Anschluss annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, signing the constitutional law as acting head of state upon the resignation of President Wilhelm Miklas.
During World War II, he served the Third Reich in the General Government of Poland and as Reichskommissar in the Netherlands. At the Nuremberg trials, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity, sentenced to death, and executed for his crimes. Read more...
Soviet judges at Nuremberg, left to right: Alexander Volchkov, Iona Nikitchenko. British judge, Norman Birkett sat at extreme right.
Major-General Iona Timofeevich Nikitchenko (Russian: Иона Тимофеевич Никитченко) (June 28, 1895 – April 22, 1967) was a judge of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union.
Iona was born to a peasant family in khutor Tuzlukov (now Rostov Oblast). He studied at his local Agricultural Institute and from 1916 was a Bolshevik. His court experience started in May 1920 when he was appointed as the chairman-deputy of the Military Court of Semirechye Army Group during the Civil War. During the Civil War, he participated on the frontlines in the Middle Asia. In 1924, he was appointed as the member of the Military Court Collegiate of the Moscow Military District. Read more...
Henri Donnedieu de Vabres (8 July 1880 – 14 February 1952) was a French jurist who took part in the Nuremberg trials after World War II. He was the primary French judge during the proceedings, with Robert Falco as his alternate.
Donnedieu was born in Nîmes. Prior to the war, he had campaigned for the concept of an International Criminal Court while serving as a professor of Criminal Law at the University of Paris. He also became director of the Paris Institute of Criminology. Later in 1947, he would again submit his idea before the United Nations' Committee on the Progressive Development of International Law and its Codification. Read more...
Did you know...
- ... that eccentric dancer Betty Knox, of Wilson, Keppel and Betty, later became a war correspondent and reported on the Nuremberg trials?
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Judges sitting in Nuremberg, from left to right: Volchkov, Nikitchenko, Birkett, Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, Biddle, Parker, Donnedieu de Vabres and Falco
Defendants in the dock at the Nuremberg trials. The main target of the prosecution was Hermann Göring (at the left edge on the first row of benches), considered to be the most important surviving official in the Third Reich after Hitler's death.
Sir David Maxwell Fyfe (at lectern, left) and an unknown prosecutor
Hermann Göring under cross-examination
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